|
II. CREATION — WORK OF THE HOLY
TRINITY
290 "In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth": three things are affirmed in these first words of Scripture: the
eternal God gave a beginning to all that exists outside of himself; he alone is
Creator (the verb "create" — Hebrew bara — always has God for its
subject). The totality of what exists (expressed by the formula "the heavens and
the earth") depends on the One who gives it being.
291 "In the beginning was the Word... and the Word
was God... all things were made through him, and without him was not anything
made that was made." The New Testament reveals that God created everything by
the eternal Word, his beloved Son. In him "all things were created, in heaven
and on earth... all things were created through him and for him. He is before
all things, and in him all things hold together." The Church's faith likewise
confesses the creative action of the Holy Spirit, the "giver of life", "the
Creator Spirit" (Veni, Creator Spiritus), the "source of every
good".
292 The Old Testament suggests and the New
Covenant reveals the creative action of the Son and the Spirit, inseparably one
with that of the Father. This creative co-operation is clearly affirmed in the
Church's rule of faith: "There exists but one God... he is the Father, God, the
Creator, the author, the giver of order. He made all things by himself,
that is, by his Word and by his Wisdom", "by the Son and the Spirit" who, so to
speak, are "his hands". Creation is the common work of the Holy Trinity.
III. "THE WORLD WAS CREATED FOR
THE GLORY OF GOD"
293 Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach
and celebrate this fundamental truth: "The world was made for the glory of God."
St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things "not to increase his glory,
but to show it forth and to communicate it", for God has no other reason for
creating than his love and goodness: "Creatures came into existence when the key
of love opened his hand." The First Vatican Council explains:
This one, true God, of his own goodness and
"almighty power", not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his
perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the benefits which
he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel "and from the
beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual
and the corporeal..."
294 The glory
of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of
his goodness, for which the world was created. God made us "to be his sons
through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of
his glorious grace", for "the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover
man's life is the vision of God: if God's revelation through creation has
already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will
the Word's manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God." The
ultimate purpose of creation is that God "who is the creator of all things may
at last become "all in all", thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our
beatitude."
|
No comments:
Post a Comment